Step #1: Rapidly expand private health coverage to include the uninsured.Thus, the most effective way to reduce inappropriate ED utilization is to institute sound “premium support” programs that would enable Medicaid patients to purchase quality private health insurance coverage with better access to care. The right policy is to integrate the working uninsured population and non-disabled Medicaid and SCHIP beneficiaries into a reformed private health insurance market.

The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

And then Brad de Long reveals

So why are none of the talking heads on your TV screen and none of the op-ed writers in your newspaper talking about how this health plan is a big victory for Mitt Romney and Republican policy analysts? Because there has been a conspiracy of silence among those working for the bill and those working against it.

True, Brad. But why didn’t you expose it when it mattered?

I mean, had more people been aware, this would have been the peek ahead in time to the upcoming failure.

But , I agree – GOP wanted this thing passed as much as the Dems, they just want to score political points from opposing it.

To make this even more fun, David Frum is quoted on the resemblance and the best part are the small objections GOP might have to the differences:

1. it allows illegal aliens to buy health insurance with their own money;

2. the progressive taxes imposed to finance it will only become larger and more progressive as time passes;

3. a public option may be added to the bill at some point; (yeah, right, when pigs will fly)

4. it imposes too many costs on small businesses;

5. it doesn’t impose enough cost controls;

6. it expands the dysfunctional program that is Medicaid.

It’s interesting, because 5 would be a bipartisan objection, I am sure. But insurers needed a new pair of shoes.

I was only 17 in 1993 so I have vague memories from then, I had just started paying some attention to politics.

The “jealousy motif goes on so he tries again

26. People, PEOPLE. O’Donnell hates Clinton.

And he didn’t work for Clinton. He worked for Pat Moynihan, who also hated Clinton. Moynihan helped deep-six the Clinton bill. Whatever problem he has with this bill, it has nothing to do with being “jealous” on Clinton’s behalf.

(Not just talking through my hat here. I know what he thinks of Bill Clinton.)

It shocked me – up to that point I only knew about the gold, silver bronze plans being lifted wholesale from Romneycare. And the Massachusetts voters’s mood clued me a bit. But David Frum was W’s TOTUS, the axis of evil guy. If he says it, it must be so. Funny that he didn’t come up with it earlier though.

I guess there’s big money for all in this – from Brad, to David to the rest of propagandists.

Well, I got one for you: If Obama merely extended Romneycare nationally, his claims of “historical” and unprecedented are a bit exaggerated, non?

But B0bots, you were had royally!

Brad de Long has the alternative universe story

Over in that alternative branch of the quantum-mechanical multiverse in which Mitt Romney was elected President in November 2008, this health care bill–with much smaller subsidies and no tax increases on the rich, and with other tweaks and modifications–passed the House of Representatives 352-83 and passed the Senate 79-20, with near-solid Republican support. Left-wing Democrats whined that it was not real reform. The David Broders and David Brookses of the world trumpeted it as an extraordinary victory for American bipartisanship.

McConnell accepted an agreement brilliantly designed by Reid that required 60 votes to pass an amendment. McConnell did that without anyone noticing anything odd after a year of saturation coverage of the importance of 60 votes in the Senate.

This time, Republicans tried to look obstructionist. To the media, the Tea Partiers, and Sarah Palin, it sure looked like Republicans were pulling out all the stops — forcing a reading of the bill, forcing a frail elderly senator to vote in the middle of the night. But the Republicans only offered four substantive amendments along with five hopeless motions to send the bill back to the Finance Committee. One Republican amendment actually got 51 votes, but didn’t pass because McConnell’s 60-vote agreement with Reid sabotaged it

brief chat with the Huffington Post on Tuesday, National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn (R-Tex.) implicitly acknowledged that Republicans are content with allowing some elements of Obama’s reform into law. And they’d generally ignore those elements when taking the fight to their Democrat opponents as November approaches.

14 comments

Excellent–I heard a strange comment on Morning Joe yesterday (towards the end or rather in the last hour of the show) that backs up your theory. Lawrence O’Donnell told Jon Kyl (I think) that there were something like 534 (about) tax increases in the bill and that he was surprised that the republicans hadn’t used that in their arguments against it. The rep. replied something about it being changed so many times. ACTING!!!! They are all in this together.

For a number of years now, my brother has been joking about a book entitled something akin to “Republicans and Democrats: The Differences.” Inside there are merely blank pages.

Ahead of the 2008 campaign Republicans assured pundits that the Swiftboat ads against Kerry would look like public service announcements compared to what they planned for Obama. Looking back on 2008, it’s hard not to think they were for him.

Yet, what a horrendous situation it is to contemplate. Perhaps that is why the lesson is so hard to learn.

What’s is it they say? “There’s not a dimes worth of difference between them.” Now when they call them, “My friends across the aisle,” we’ll know that they are friends. I always thought they were in bed together.

The Republicans didn’t stay home November 4th 2008, they voted for 0bama.

[…] 24, 2010 in Jr.jr There’s gloating a plenty in the media now that the Heritage Foundation brain child has been adopted by the so called dems with most papers carrying the same photos Click here to add text Click here to add […]

[…] of Wall Street, of course you’d love it. Unfortunately David Frum let the cat out of the bag: your non-ideological healthcare came from the very ideological Heritage foundation. right-wing policy analysts proposed an individual mandate to purchase health coverage as a […]